Saturday, November 26, 2011

Wedding Tidbits update...

Okay, so I got yelled at last night. LOL. Okay, so not yelled at, but Tracy pointed out that I missed something in my wedding tidbits blog....The car! Use your own car if you can, limos are expensive and overrated. I, fortunately, had my 74 Dodge Challenger to use :) But if you don't have a cool classic car...see if you can borrow one from a friend/family member! They make GREAT photo props too. Money's not an issue? Get creative. Like golf? See if you can rent a golf cart somewhere. Love horses? Horse drawn carriage. Use your imagination!!!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Wedding tidbits

As a little girl, I dreamed about having the perfect wedding, as every little girl does. Pristine white dress, winkling lights, and my prince charming all wrapped up into a little bundle of perfect. Needless to say, life is not perfect. And not everyone has tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a wedding to make it princess perfect. Our wedding was perfect for us. This blog is just to share some things I came up with or found, maybe to help other couples, or maybe just to relive it a little more :) Plus figured I'd give some resources as to where I got different things.

Just because some people were so impressed with the different things we did at the wedding, I figured I'd include a small description of them. When I walked up, I lit two candles. I had forgotten to tell Bridget (our officiate) about it, and so it wasn't announced, but one was for my friend Shirley who died this year suddenly, and the other was for my grandfather who died shortly before the wedding.

At the beginning of the ceremony, we had tied the rings together with ribbon, and tied them to the inside of Christinas (our flower girl) basket and our officiate gave our rings to Steve (best man) to give to my side of the family first (I guess it's tradition to give to the brides family first? lol), as part of our ring warming ceremony. Basically everyone gets to look at the rings this way, each person looks, prays, thinks happy thoughts, whatever they want to do, and then passes them onto the next person. At the end of the ceremony, when it's time I wants my rings back so I can put them on my loves hand, the officiate asked for the rings, and Steve went and picked them up. It was really amusing in our case because he handed the rings to Bridget and she just stood there and stared at them. I hadn't showed them to her before because I had been planning on keeping them until that day, but I did end up showing Adam early (I'm SO bad about keeping presents when I have them in advance). She probably stood for nearly 30 seconds while everyone was wondering what she was doing and I was silently giggling to myself, and then turns to me and asks where I got them from lol. I had found this awesome guy on Etsy who hand stamps rings. John @ Unicorn Trading also did Adams promise ring for me. He's a joy to work with, and likes a challenge :) Go check him out!

And now for the box. This puzzled a lot of people as no one had heard of it before, but I've heard some feedback that a lot of people are thinking about it for themselves now. :) I had a box fashioned on Etsy that worked out fabulously. I was originally going to have a box made or find a vintage box that suited me, but everything happens for a reason. The handmade boxes were going to range from $50+, and even more if I wanted different woods for different meanings. But, I found a company called DesignCraft Industries who made me a custom sized box, big enough for a bottle of wine and some other things, for a little over $30 including shipping. I thought that was reasonable enough. Here's a link to give what they suggested for the ceremony, but of course we had to tweak it. We didn't want to ruin or crack the box with nails, so we found a couple of hasps and used antique-y looking locks, each locked our own lock, and then placed the key on yarn (in matching blue, of course) over each others heads. We both wrote letters, and plan to open them on our 5th anniversary while sharing the wine. We didn't put glasses in, we figure we'll have plenty of those :) Plus didn't want them to break. My best friend/maid-of-honor/honorary sister's mother (a.k.a. Mommy #5 for me lol) offered to wood burn the box as part of our gift to us. Here's what she came up with :)


From the front. You can see our locks are heart shaped :D
Close up
Closeup of the hearts
Closeup of the peacock feather. Such detail! She's soooo talented!

The top.
Closeup of the open rose. She said roses have meaning, and the bud was the when the relationship was just taking off, and now the rose is open that we're married...or something like that...LOL.
The bud
One side
The other side
The back
Closeup of the back
And this she added as a joke she said. She actually asked Tracy if either of us would be offended if she put that on there. I was THRILLED! I would actually love this as a tattoo...this or the peacock...or both :)
Isn't that darling? I love it :) She also paints just as lovely! I am extremely proud of this box, and it will be treasured forever :)

I used real freeze dried hydrangea petals for up the walkway and our petal cones. We made our petal cones from old sheet music that I picked up at a rummage sale or estate sale for very reasonably. The petals were from Flyboy Natural Petals, also found on Facebook, and rather reasonable I thought. They do all kinds of flower petals, and they lasted a long time as I bought them shortly after we were engaged and they survived nicely in their packaging for over 6 months. I thought they really added nice color to everything. Wish I would have thought to put some on the tables at the reception *rolls eyes* Ahh afterthought. :)

Instead of a traditional guestbook at the reception, we used a wishing well and black river stones. People could write their names, little thoughts of encouragement, or whatever they wanted and place them in the well. That way when we have a place we'll be staying at, I'm going to spray coat them and they will be placed around our garden, that way everyone will be with us always :) We used black stones from the dollar store, a locally made wishing well, and oil based Sharpie paint pens.

And the bouquets. I was very happy with how they came out. I actually had some people think they were real! I purchased the bridesmaids bouquets on clearance, and actually two bunches of flowers for mine to make it fuller. The hydrangeas in the centerpieces on the tables I bought from the dollar store, and then the bouquets I purchased at Afloral. I REALLY liked that site, tons of awesome floral stuff. Highly recommend it if you want fake flowers. I preferred that anyway, because that way we have them forever :) Yeah sure you can dry real ones, but it's just not the same. I hot glued ribbons on all of them, and then also placed a Three Days Grace guitar pick on mine attached to a string. Our favorite band, if you don't know who they are, check them out :) "Lost In You" is our song, was our first dance as husband and wife, and part of the chorus is engraved on our rings :D

So all in all, I spent a lot of time on Etsy & at the dollar store....lol :) I think the biggest thing is to remember to breathe, and that even if something goes wrong, or not as planned, it's not the end of the world. I just can't believe some of the women on that show Bridezillas. I got complimented a lot on how calm I was.

Oh yeah, and last thing. I bought my dress on clearance at a bridal store...check other outlets. I paid a lot more than I had been hoping, which was still half price, and there were a TON online that were cheaper. Now that I have it, I wouldn't have traded my dress for the world, just a thought though :) Oh, and ivory looks awesome...I always thought it would be too dark and always wanted a white dress...it's not. It's lovely. :) Anyway, those are some explanations and thoughts and whatnot. :)

The biggest shopping day from hell....

Who's ready for Black Friday?! Well, I work Thursday night into this maddness...*sigh* Walmart will be staying open, and sales will begin at 10pm. 10PM! What is this world coming to?! Next year Walmart will probably begin sales at 9! And I heard a rumor that beginning next year, we will be open through Christmas. Seriously? What happened to our FAMILY company? I tell you, if Sam Walton was still alive, it wouldn't be like this. Money, money, money, that's all they care about. I was out on Black Friday once with my mom before I started working overnights, and while I enjoy shopping with her, it wasn't nearly as crowded as it gets nowadays, nor was it as chaotic. People have gotten KILLED in the last few years. So sad. And so I'll likely be doing a majority of my shopping Cyber Monday(being it's my day off :D ), and a majority of that on homemade stuff, or supplies for me to make my own homemade stuff. I encourage everyone to make your own gifts. There is a sense of pride that goes into making your own gifts, and if they're useful gifts (i.e. clothing, etc), they may just become a family heirloom! I hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday season :) /endrant :)

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Some wedding photos...


I don't have my professional photos back yet, but a couple friends took my camera and took some photos :)
My dress hanging up in the hotel room.

Julie doin' my hair
Positioning my hair piece
After over an hour of curling and over 2 cans of hair spray....

Me being the dork that I am...
We had a tent put up at the park so he couldn't see me before the wedding, and so we all had something to get dressed in. Tracy was freezing, but I was quite comfy all strapped into my dress lol.

Me and my home girls :) I think I was making sure my mom was remembering to do something...don't remember what though lol. Mah shoes
Showin' some leg!

The ceremony

Greeting everyone after the wedding

Standing for the multitudes of photos
@ the reception, me and my maid-of-honor Tracy
Tracy & her hubby Nolan
The boys all chatting outside
Adams brother Aaron dancin the night away

My father in law rockin' the air guitarHad to take a photo of my feet back at the hotel....DIRTY! lol. That's what I get for taking off my shoes half the time at the reception. lol.

The night before....


We had the rehersal @ the park & a meal at Adams parents house the night before the wedding, was a lot of fun. And then, just before midnight, my mom and I headed to my hotel room for the night. Can't spoil tradition! It was a nice room, super cute!








LOVED the fan!



The makings of a wedding....

I decided to do some of our stuff for the wedding by hand...


First, I made the felt flower for Adam's boutonneire (or however you friggin' spell it lol), then I wrapped the peacock feather with floral tape, and glued the ribbons on. He wanted the fringes trimmed, so I obliged.

And then I made a plainer version for the other boys...

For the girls' hair clips, I ordered the plain clips online, and then added hydrangea flowers from the Dollar Store hydrangeas we picked up for the table arrangements.


And I took our favorite photos of each other and the critters and included them in our peacock fan photo display :)


And this what happens when I get distracted and the hot glue gun is still on.... :)
And of course, we enlisted Smudges help...
:)

This was a card box we picked up from someones wedding for $10 on Craigslist. I ended up adding more to it than just the one feather though.

Our wedding favors, peacock shaped lilac scented soaps. We ended up with a ton of these left over unfortunately, but I suppose it's better to have too many than not enough.

My toss garter

And the one for Adam to keep:
I had the lady send the garter without the ribbons and charms attached, and I added everything afterwards, so I could include the peacock feathers, and instead of the butterfly charm on Adams, I put our favorite band's pick, Three Days Grace. Their song "Lost In You" was also our first dance together.